After some murmurings yesterday about new owners on microstockgroup, an official announcement has now been emailed to current crestock members.

as of 1 July 2010 crestock is now part of the masterfile corporation, masterfile have been in the licensing business for almost 30 years. In the statement they basically outline the fact that they wanted a microstock site and crestock was ripe for the picking.

It's no secret that the microstock business has revolutionized the global stock photo industry and our acquisition of Crestock is a springboard for Masterfile to join the revolution. We believe the combination of Crestock’s community with Masterfile’s commercial experience and resources will be beneficial to both clients and contributors. We can provide clients with quality stock images across all price points and licensing models, and give contributing artists an improved global marketing force for their images.

For at least 6 months it's been obvious that crestock has been 'hibernating' with a skeleton staff, although plenty of sales have been taking place, from a contributors perspective there have been long acceptance delays and virtually no response to support queries. Late last year crestock informally announced they had run out of funding, and were trying their best not to allow this to affect the site.

For the past 9 months I've been patiently waiting with crossed fingers. While my portfolio on there (small as it is) has remained in place and I continued to upload, I voiced my doubts in my review and the lack of payouts and uncertain future forced me to mark them as 'not recommended'. As I understand it there have been no regular payouts for a around a year, just sporadic reports from other members that payouts were coming e.g. "6 months after request" (I assume when there was enough money available). I received a token payout in December 2009 and took it as a good will gesture, hopeful for more to come.

The release promises a brighter future for all crestock contributors with the following promises.